VMware foreshadows major strategy shift

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 31 August 2010 17:19

IT Industry - Strategy

VMware is promising to launch - at its annual customer event VMworld 2010 in San Francisco - a new IT-as-a-service strategy along with what it says will be "a full suite of cloud computing solutions to help businesses move towards a business-centric, services-oriented way of using IT."

According to VMware, central to the its IT-as-a-service strategy is "an infrastructure that will enable IT to fundamentally redefine its relationship with the business...[enabling] IT to produce services in a self-service model, with consistent policies and business contracts aligning resources to business needs."

VMware claims that, within this model, "the physical boundaries that have governed enterprise IT will erode, establishing logical pools of resources combining those of the enterprise data centre with those provided by external or public cloud providers, without compromising security or quality of service."

It says that, "For the consumer of IT services, the result will be near infinite resources, on demand, with cost structures and performance levels matched to business priorities," and adds that, "Unlike previous tectonic shifts in IT that required wholesale replacement of infrastructure hardware and software, the VMware vision for infrastructure is based on extending existing investments in hardware and software, enabling IT to achieve unprecedented results in an evolutionary manner."

VMware defines IT-as-a-service as being "the transformation of IT to a more business-centric approach, focusing on outcomes such as operational efficiency, competitiveness and rapid response."

This, it says: "means IT shifts from producing IT services to optimising production and consumption of those services in ways consistent with business requirements [changing] the role of IT from a cost centre to a centre of strategic value."

VMware claims that its new IT-as-a-service strategy "provides a complete platform for cloud computing, … supports an evolutionary approach … and supports an open ecosystem."

VMware said also that its new approach, "not only transforms the data centre and development, but also end-user computing. VMware's user-centric approach to personal computing will ensure secure access to applications and data from any device, where and when a user needs it. With VMware solutions, IT will gain flexibility in service delivery, improved efficiency and availability while end users gain a superior user experience."